Good review and W1zzard… your assessment of price seems right also. I think more AIB’s will come on board in 2103 once their 7950’s SKU are only "Boost models" and they wait for Sea Islands. They’ll want this to drum up some press to keep the fires going. It has a place even with the efficiency issue, like you said especially once at $240 range.

Would like to see some nicer cooling setups, and while good overclock if I was looking at one today and thinking of OC’n today I’d still gravitate to a 7950. That said, if in February next year if this can be had for something like $220, and just "plug-it and forget-it" till I find a title it can’t play that's a great buy over a GTX660Ti that I wouldn’t see at that price by then.

But I wonder why you haven't taken a pic of the fan?
It would be interesting to know wich fans are used, what kind of bearing they use and so on.

The performance of the cards doesn't really matter as there is no real difference between two with the same chip. But if one uses a really good cooler with a real good fan, the card is more worth than another with just sleeve bearing fans...

But I wonder why you haven't taken a pic of the fan?
It would be interesting to know wich fans are used, what kind of bearing they use and so on.

The performance of the cards doesn't really matter as there is no real difference between two with the same chip. But if one uses a really good cooler with a real good fan, the card is more worth than another with just sleeve bearing fans...

Click to expand...

¿

Do you mean to say that the pic in the first page is not adequate? Or did you want him to actually take it off of the card?

Card is pretty decent; it just about matches the 7950. I got all excited until I saw the power consumption. Very inefficient vs the 7950 AND the regular 7870. The price is right with this card, but the configuration is not. I will pass.

Nice review W1zzard, I have been waiting some weeks for it.
I will wait few days, to see aftermarket coolers compatiblity with this new model.
I don´t appreciate Club3D cooling, in this case.
Power consumption registered values are higher than expected...
Hope that Nvidia will respond by cutting GTX 660 Ti price a bit.

Sold my HD 7870 before the release of these cards...and just had to pick up a new HD 7850 2GB from Newegg for $150 with Far Cry 3 on Black Friday.
I'm glad I didn't wait for this, and rather, I could wait for next-generation and probably sell this HD 7850 for the same price I bought it.

Yes it is...
As I said earlier, the differences in performance between two cards with the same chip are negligible, so the cooler of a particular card is the thing that could make a card really worth buying...

This has got to be the first time I have ever heard anyone ask that question before. I'm sure someone has, but, most dont give a hoot.

Click to expand...

Mostly because no one really tells them that there could be a difference here and that it could be better to buy card A instead of card B because card A uses the better quality fans (and allso uses a plate that also cools the memory) than card B, while card B could be a little bit faster...

Oh and by the way: Have you ever heard about NTK (HK) Limited??
Seems that they made some fas that some people put on a graphics card...

So if I knew wich of the cards really uses some fans I know (like the mentioned Protechnic or Powerlogic ones) I'd buy them, even if they are a bit more expansive. And I think that there might be some people out there who think about that too.

But for now there is no way of knowing wich graphics cards uses wich fan...

Since Techpowerup already disassambles the card, I don't see why they don't make pictures of the fan too. Or mention the model number of the fan...

I mean if I waste ~400bucks on a graphics card, I'd be crazy to waste another 50 bucks for a cooler and another 20 to 30 bucks for high quality fans...
Especially since I void my warranty on the card...

Hey W1zzard, just wondering why the performance for all resolutions is still in these reviews. It just doesn't give a good view of the performance of these cards when you want to choose say a high end card like the 7970 or 680.

Usually I end up seeing people using the all resolutions graph to show "this card is only so much % faster than so and so blah blah," when at 1080p+ it's 5-10% better than that(not huge by any means but it's significant).